Burning Roses

“AAGGGHHHHHHHHH!”

He screams in agony. I mean pure fucking agony. There’s nothing quite like it really. When you stub your toe on the corner of the bed in the middle of the night, and you let out that little yelp, the one where you immediately feel emasculated even though it hurts like hell and you have to cover it up by shouting “Fuck” a few times, yeah that’s nothing compared to this. This sounds like a squealing pig being roasted alive. Which, actually is a pretty apt description of the situation. He’s right on the third rail, pinned to it I think. Or melted to it. Either way he’s stuck there with what seems to be an entire electrical storm running through his body. All he needs is a tribe of men and women all chanting around him and throwing seasonings as they offer him up to the gods.

“PLEASE. HELP ME!”

It’s quite unpleasant really. The sight for one thing is terrifically awful. Like watching raw steak cook with the heat all the way up, it chars on the outside and pillows of smoke rise up. The smoke is rising too, and filing this damn subway tube. I remember when I was a kid, maybe ten or twelve years ago and this girl I used to hang around with, Kathy I think her name was, we used to light things on fire with a magnifying glass. Those little things like ants and leaves and small things like that. But there was one time we found this rose. This perfect rose that stood out from all the wilted ones. It was fall and all of the plant life was starting to curl up and die like most things do in the cold. But this beautiful rose was still standing strong amidst its relatives and we plucked and admired it for a quick moment. We had to admire it, it was something remarkable. The stem had only three thorns on it, but they were razor sharp. I know because I used it to draw a bit of blood from my fingertip, as children would do. And after we admired it, for the impossible specimen it was, we took it over to the pavement in front of my house and we lit it on fire, having our own little offering to the gods. In seconds it was up in flames. Not the little flames around the edges that the leaves from the oak trees would do, but real full on flames with smoke rising and swirling in the air. It was intoxicating, the smell was at least. There’s nothing quite like a burning rose. It lingers in the air and swims up into your nose, holding onto the hairs so you can keep smelling it for hours afterwords. Maybe it was just me, I don’t remember how Kathy liked it, but to me that smell was worth anything in the world.

“All right, everyone stand back. Make a hole please. Make a hole!”

The paramedics and police are running around trying to get down onto the tracks. They’re all covering their faces, trying to block out the smell. It’s horrendous. I feel a bit queasy and I’m almost positive someone threw up already, from the sight or the smell I’m not sure. It could be both. It’s something almost entirely unlike the burning rose. I say almost for the mere fact that this is something that has already clung to my nostril hairs, my clothes, my skin, my hair. It will cling to me. It will stay with me. At least it should. It’s like burning rubber concentrated to right in front of you. I’m still sitting on the bench. When I walked down it hadn’t started. I’m not actually sure when exactly this man jumped or fell onto the tracks. I don’t think anyone saw him. No one screamed. No one noticed. We all just sort of smelled something. It wasn’t bad at first. A bit like burning the wrong leaves during a bonfire. But then the screams came. I think the screams made the smell worse. Once you become aware to the horrible things around you, it all seems so much worse than it is. Once we heard the screams, someone yelled in horror. Not as much horror as the man on the tracks I’m sure, but an appropriate amount for someone seeing another person burn alive right in front of them. What happened next is the same thing that happens during any extreme situation, though I’m not too sure if this would be logged into that category. I can faintly hear the paramedics. One of them has a shovel I think.

“We’re going to have to scrape him off.”

“Kill me. Please. Just Kill me.”

“Lift him up.”

“How?”

“what do you mean, just fucking pick him up.”

“He’s melted to it, I can’t.”

“Let me die…”

I put in my headphones and the screams stop. Bankrupt On Selling by Modest Mouse comes on. An underrated song to say the least. Well underrated for most people. Obviously anyone who listens to Modest Mouse loves the song. It encapsulates not only the album and the times it was made, but it really leaves the subtleness out of the scenario. That’s something that sadly gets a bad rap. To be outspoken is something too out of the ordinary now. Well to be outspoken for a cause. It took up around the nineties and through maybe twenty-twenty. But those were the times that cushioned racism and economic downfall was all too real. But then somehow everyone sort of lost touch. People still yelled about things, but nothing important. You would hear people yelling on the street about how they deserved to be treated with respect and such, when they were showing no respect to anyone. It became a fad in a sense, to just yell whatever was on your mind. Then, at some point, everyone stopped listening to each other. So then the streets were full of loud ramblings that no one even paid attention too. After a while people started just screaming out what they were wearing. You could walk through the financial district and hear “ARMANI BLACK SUIT! BROOKS BROTHER’S TIE!”. And god forbid you tried to go to a gym, you would have been defeated by an array of “NIKE! NIKE! NIKE!” Being outspoken became as played out as being subtle, and now we’re left with todays artists and musicians in a constant struggle of trying to figure out what to do. It’s become so detrimental to their mental stability that schizophrenics have been kicked out onto the streets from mental hospitals because of over population of artists. And the ones that have refrained from taking the short bus to the nut house have been left on the street with the schizophrenics yelling on the top of their lungs their subtle messages. It hasn’t seemed to work for any of them yet, but they’ll keep trying until they lose their voice or they strike it big.

The man, well most of him, is hauled off the tracks on a gurney. His hair has burned off and the front half of him looks like charcoal, while the back half of him looks like a really bad sunburn. The people are all lined up right at the edge of the tracks, just like they have been for the last half hour. Each one not looking at the man in agony but at their phone as it records the man in agony. It makes it easier for them. I’m sure in their conscious minds they’re thinking something along the lines of “Holy shit, no one is going to believe this”, but in their subconscious it dulls the reality. Looking through a screen makes it seem as though it’s been written in a script and we’re all just watching a movie. But we’re not. This is reality, everything around us. Most people it seems just wish so hard that it isn’t, that they’ve become so entranced with what really isn’t and have formulated that to be the reality around them. They live in a rainbow’s explosion and only focus on their favorite color.

Finally the train comes and the doors open. Everyone puts their phones away and puts their eyes back on pseudo-reality. Isaac Brock launches into some bit about God being an Indian Giver, and the doors shut.